


The Price We Pay

by miss_tatiana



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Heavy Angst, all my emmajean week fics have been fluffy and i needed some pain, im sorry guys, it's an 'i never got to say i love you' scenario, sort of gory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 02:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11614467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_tatiana/pseuds/miss_tatiana
Summary: Jean recalled what happened after the battle in flashes. The battle itself had gone horribly, horribly wrong, as battle often did. You’d think that the X Men would learn a god damn lesson after fighting so many, but they were still as hypocritical as ever, preaching peace to their students and turning around to meet Magneto in another stupid fucking battle. And it felt like this time, they had finally paid the price.





	The Price We Pay

Jean recalled what happened after the battle in flashes. The battle itself had gone horribly, horribly wrong, as battle often did. You’d think that the X Men would learn a god damn lesson after fighting so many, but they were still as hypocritical as ever, preaching peace to their students and turning around to meet Magneto in another stupid fucking battle. And it felt like this time, they had finally paid the price.

* * *

 

She had to patch herself up. They’d all slumped into the Blackbird and she’d thrown together a makeshift splint for her ankle and grabbed some gauze for the gash in her shoulder. She wasn’t being selfish - far from it, she needed to be awake and alert, able to function as best she could, in order to go about healing the rest of the X Men’s wounds. The rest of the X Men and… No. She focused on herself, grinding her teeth together as she bound her splint, pulling a bone that’d been shattered back into a straight line, her hands shaking wildly and her vision threatening to blink out because of the pain. But she saw her friends, her teammates, her family, in the jet around her, and that forced her to keep going. 

She stood up, all of her weight on the wall of the Blackbird. She tried setting her foot on the ground, and felt it go out from under her. She was on the flood again. So. She’d have to use her powers to move. She taped some gauze to the deep cut that went over her right shoulder, hoping that she’d done it tight enough to stop the bleeding, at least long enough for her to hold consciousness for a little bit and patch up her family. 

She was the doctor. She had to do this.

* * *

 

Jean got to the cockpit with all the supplies she could carry. Ororo was passed out in the passenger seat. “Where did it hit her?” Jean asked, her voice sounding distant and quiet, the question directed towards Hank, who flew the jet, eyes straight ahead and jaw clenched. She checked Ororo’s pulse, and it was faint, slow, but there. 

“Chest,” Hank answered quickly, his voice devoid of anything one could expect to hear in a situation like this. 

Jean understood. He was tired. He was barely finding the energy to keep going. She was in the same boat. 

“Chunk of rock the size of a snare drum hit her right in the chest.” Hank blinked several times, eyes still focused on the sky in front of the jet’s windshield but filling with tears.

Jean grabbed some safety jackets from a compartment in the roof and stuffed them on either side of Ororo, hoping to keep her from moving. She buckled Ororo’s seat belt, and tilted her head back, opening her mouth. What she was most worried about was broken ribs and collapsed lungs. Those needed a hospital, real medical care, surgery. The best she could do right now was cushion Ororo and hope she could breath.

* * *

 

“Hank, let me help,” Jean begged, turning to him after doing all she could for Ororo. “I know you’re hurt. I saw your hand get crushed.” She fought back tears. It destroyed her almost as much as the blast had to see Hank put on a stoic, brave face for her and try to hide his injuries. 

“I need to fly the jet. Go help someone who needs it more,” Hank said firmly, but he had only one hand on the steering yoke, and the other was hanging limply at his side in a way that only made Jean panic more. 

“Hank, please,” said Jean. “I can wrap it up, just to make sure no more damage is done before we get back to the school. You can help the rest of us the best if you’re patched up.” She sniffed, feeling absolutely hopeless. 

Finally, Hank nodded, never looking away from the clouds in front of them. “What are we going to do with the White Queen?” he asked, as Jean began to wind bandages around his hand. 

Jean took a breath, surprised he brought Emma up. She had been hurt by the blast maybe even more than they had, but when Magneto left, he left her behind. The chain was only as strong as its weakest link. They’d taken Emma onto the jet with them, and she’d lost consciousness almost immediately. “I don’t know, Hank.” Jean didn’t want to think about Emma, the woman she’d loved from a distance for years. But the alternative was thinking about how Hank only had four bones still intact in his right hand, and how he wouldn’t draft another lab report with that hand for a long time.

* * *

 

Back in the body of the Blackbird, Jean knelt in front of Bobby, who was sitting on the floor of the jet, his back against the wall. His lip was trembling, and tears were coursing down his face, half of which was covered in blood. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and Jean didn’t want to consider the damage that could be done under his eyelid. Hopefully he’d be able to see out of that eye again. His nose looked like it’d been broken right across the bridge, and the blood that was streaming out of it covered the lower half of his face. The rest of his body was no doubt just as broken, but his face looked terrified on top of that. He was too young for this, he shouldn’t be here. 

“Can you tell me your full name?” Jean whispered, because even saying something as simple and protocol as a concussion check any louder would make her break down into tears. Her eyes kept straying over to Emma Frost, slumped in the corner of the jet, unmoving. 

Bobby sniffed, trying to keep a straight face, but he fell apart, and a sob escaped his lips. “The last thing I said to my parents was not to call me again,” he said, his voice so strained, so drenched with grief, that it was pushed to a tense whisper, tiny breaks of his actual voice sneaking through. 

“Bobby,” Jean said softly, and she couldn’t say anything else, for there was nothing else. 

“This morning I was angry at Rogue for copying my homework,” Bobby said, shoulders shaking violently as realization and heartbreak passed through his body. “I don’t want- that can’t be it. That can’t be all I was.” He looked up at Jean.

That was when Jean’s resolve broke. She grimaced, trying to hold back the tears that were already rolling down her cheeks. She told him to recite his alphabets. 

He did it with his eye trained on the ceiling, tears steadily flowing through the blood on his face, and his fists clenched by his sides.

* * *

 

When Jean reached Emma Frost, the sun had begun to go down outside the jet’s windows. They had to be almost back to the school, they had been flying for what felt like forever. She looked down at the woman she had had countless conversations with through the telepathy they shared, finding solace in each other despite going up against each other every time there was a fight. She thought back over all the thing she had confessed to Emma over the several years they had been in contact, never once speaking in person. She regretted not saying everything she wanted to. 

She lowered herself to the ground, sitting next to when Emma’s body lay, crumpled. She scanned for visible injuries, and saw too many. The telltale white of Emma’s uniform was marred with too much blood, and too much dust. It wasn’t right. 

“Emma. Hey, Emma.” Jean took a deep breath that came in as more like a gasp. “Can you hear me?” She laid a hand gingerly on Emma’s shoulder, which was laced with bruises.

Emma somehow still looked delicate, even now, even with all of this on her. The cuts seemed to be just splashes of color, and the bruises were like purple lilypads under a thin layer of ice in the winter. She was beautiful, even in such a critical condition.

Jean finally lifted Emma’s wrist and laid her fingers across it. She didn’t know why she’d put off trying to find a pulse until so late in the inspection. It was almost like she could subconsciously hear how Emma wasn’t breathing, and knew that it wasn’t necessary. There was no pulse. Of course there was no pulse. And when Jean reached out telepathically, towards the voice she’d found wit, humor, and comfort in so many times despite the miles between them, she was met with silence. Heartbreaking, bone shattering silence. 

So, Jean thought. This is how the White Queen falls. Without a last word. And with that moment of serene reflection gone, Jean didn’t care to hold back the wail that left her body.

* * *

 

“Could you describe to me again what happened?” 

Jean looked down at the floor. She was on the couch in Charles’ study. It was one in the morning, and Jean had stayed in the medical room until Ororo, Hank, and Bobby were treated before letting Charles fix her own injuries. She was exhausted. She was numb. She didn’t want to be telling anyone what happened, even Charles. “Something went wrong. Avalanche- his powers- everything just… exploded. The earth beneath our feet, the cliffside above us. He went supernova. Magneto decided it was time to go, and went off with Avalanche and Sabretooth. He left Em- the White Queen. She was too badly injured for him to bother. Hank carried us all back to the Blackbird.” She felt like she was hearing her words only, not saying them. “I did everything I could, but it wasn’t a lot. I could’ve done-”

Charles laid a hand over hers, and he looked older than he ever had before in the lamplight. “My dear, dear Jean. We cannot turn time back. We shouldn’t torture ourselves with what we could have done.”

Jean looked up at him. “We fight and we fight and we fight and it’s all for nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Of course it means-”

“Charles, Bobby is sixteen years old. He could have died.” Jean shook her head. “As we flew back he told me the last things he said to everyone he loved, and then what he wanted to say to them instead in case he didn’t make it back to the school.”

Charles took a deep breath. “There are risks to this profession, indeed,” he mused, voice full of grief. “It is unfair that we are the ones who are left to fight humans’ battles for them.”

“We shouldn’t,” Jean said sharply. “We should just- stop. Let them deal with their shit on their own.”

“Then we would be no better than the people who inflicted this harm on our family today, Jean,” Charles murmured. “Someone must fight. There must always be a hero.”

“Emma Frost died today,” Jean spat, glaring into Charles’ eyes, tears welling in her own. “I sat next to a body and said I love you for the first time. No one should- we shouldn’t have to do that.”

“It is the price we pay,” Charles whispered, looking into the fire, burning gently in the hearth, a deep guilt on his face. 

Jean let herself sink into the armchair, his words resounding in her head. Perhaps, she thought. What an unfair price it was.


End file.
